In the previous article of the Australian Innovation report
(Summer 08), we spoke of customer-centric innovation being the
management discipline for the new millennium and provided an inside
look into a number of Australian companies that have excelled as a
result of taking a customer-centred approach.
In this article, we will take a step further and delve into the
emerging discipline of user-centred innovation - or user-centred
design, as it has come to be known - and investigate how some of
Australia's leading companies are using it to advance their growth
agenda.
Web designers have had a focus on usercentred design and have
used it successfully as a discipline for many years and any Google
search you care to undertake will be littered with web page and
digital references. So what is 'user-centred design' and why hasn't
it taken off in the mainstream of Australian business? Why haven't
Australian businesses embraced using a methodology that allows them
to get up close and personal with their customers and truly
understand their customers' unmet needs and wants for both products
and services? And what is the process for user-centred design and
how can companies employ it to keep hold of their most valuable
customers in a market where every customer is increasingly
precious?
This article intends to examine the answer to all those
questions and hopefully shed some light on an increasingly powerful
process that is driving substantial growth for some companies ahead
of their competitors.
The term user-centred design was coined by Donald Norman from
the University of Southern California in the 1980s. He defined it
as "the process in which end-users influence how a design takes
shape. It is both a broad philosophy and a variety of methods." The
most important concept, he believed, was that users were involved
one way or another along the entire journey and not just at the end
of the process.
Over the past two decades user-centred design has developed
greater recognition and is now seen as a philosophy and a process
in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user are
given extensive attention at each stage of the design and
development process. From a commercial perspective, IDEO, the
leading innovation consultancy globally, has successfully employed
this approach for over twenty years and call it 'human-centred
design' defining it as "a process and a set of techniques used to
create new solutions for the world. When we say solutions, we mean
products, services, environments, organisations, and modes of
interaction."
The reason the process is called 'humancentred' (user-centred)
is because it starts with the people who the products or services
are being developed for. The starting point of the process is to
examine the "needs, dreams, and behaviours of the people we want to
affect with our solutions". This is a very different lens than most
companies start with. Normally they only use a business lens that
asks "How can I sell more phones/insurance/movie tickets etc to my
current and future customers?"
By comparison, user-centred design seeks to listen to and
understand what customers may want. Once it is clear what customers
are looking for from the universe of what is desirable, the next
phase is to view the solutions developed through the lenses of
feasibility (what is technically and organisationally possible) and
finally viability (what is financially viable for the
business).
It is the solving of the business problem through these three
lenses that creates significantly increased value for the companies
employing the methodology.
Early users of user-centred design included Proctor & Gamble
back in the 1970s. As a pioneer of in-situ or user-centred
research, they sent researchers into customers' homes to observe
them directly as they went about their daily chores. Interestingly,
what they found was that P&G's in-situ market research helped
to solve problems that the customers themselves were not aware
of.
In one of the earlier examples, P&G, when conducting in-home
research, observed that some liquid laundry detergent ran down the
front of the bottle when it was being poured. Soon, P&G came up
with a simple redesign of the spout that funnelled any drips back
into the bottle. This simple user-centred innovation led to a
dramatic increase in sales.
As with most of these things, customers had been happy to use a
workaround and to wipe the drip away with a piece of cloth. This is
a classic case of being able to improve the product based on user
needs, something that will unlikely come out of a traditional
research program that employs focus groups. Why? Because often the
elements that make for inconvenience are perceived as so small that
they never bubble to the surface using traditional research
methods.
For an approach that sounds so compelling and has produced so
many commercial successes overseas, why hasn't it taken off in
Australia and why aren't companies using it to advance their growth
agenda?
Interesting research conducted by David Tunnicliffe of Arnold
& Bolingbroke last year went some of the way to answering that
when he found that there is not much in the way of innovation in
research methodology in Australia. In his findings, dynamism was
rarely a quality attributed to market research. Across the sample,
there was a palpable sense of there being little drive, from within
the research community, towards genuine innovation.
(Quote)
At worst, respondents felt qualitative research methods, in
particular, to be verging on hackneyed and predictable but also a
more general feeling of there being "little new under the sun" was
commonplace. The perceived absence of methodological innovation
served to increase reliance on individuals. One respondent from a
well-known brand consultancy said that "Even the young clients tire
of the routine of the groups behind the glass. I often feel this
too; I'm not sure how to move toward more of an ongoing
conversation with consumers rather than this artificial kind of
intervention from time to time in a group discussion."
Across the sample, there were calls for greater innovation from
both marketing services companies and clients with one respondent
saying: "What I don't want to do is some standard research that is
going to result in the same old debrief. I would welcome a more
creative approach to methodology." And another, looking for a more
innovative approach: "I'm always keen to see new methodologies;
out-of-the-box thinking. What everyone does is no longer
interesting. If I can see that someone would add to the pot, that's
more interesting."
In addition to well-worn and decreasingly valuable research
methods, we believe most Australian companies take a more confined
approach in attempting new products innovation versus taking a
wider, more expansive view of how successful innovation can be
achieved and where the greatest value for their organisation can be
created. A trap a lot of companies fall into is to think of
innovation too narrowly - they define it merely as the thing your
firm offers. Another more powerful option and one which successful
companies use is to use reframing as a tool, by using a different
lens and turning that lens onto other aspects of their business to
reveal new possibilities and value creation.
The Doblin Group helps companies look at creating greater value
by innovating not just in one area like 'product', but by applying
a lens across ten different areas, which then forms a multiplier
effect when applied to a firm's business problem.
Across the ten types of innovation, they include 'inside-out'
categories such as core and enabling processes, product/service
performance, service systems and customer service.
There are also what they call 'outside-in' categories which
include channel, brand, customer experience, business model and
value networks. The inside-out perspective is similar to the
traditional understanding of value chains. It asks the question,
"What strategic assets and/or core competencies does our
organisation possess and what products or services can we produce
with them?" This is the framework that a lot of companies use and
is normally quickly followed with a generative project to develop a
range of new products and services which the company hopes will be
seen as innovative by the market.
What is missing is the outside-in thinking that inverts and
complements this traditional perspective, asking instead, "What do
our customers want and need and how can our organisation construct
new business models, a new ecosystem of partnerships or external
relationships or a significantly improved customer experience to
deliver it to them?"
This second step of truly understanding consumers' unmet needs
and wants is where the value is created and where user-centred
design plays a valuable role in helping organisations achieve that
value.
Which draws the inevitable question of why focus on needs?
Dev Patnaik and Robert Becker, who are the founders and
principals of Jump Associates in the USA, are probably among the
leading experts in 'needfinding', one of the key planks in
delivering commercially successful user-centred design. They have
proved that an understanding of people's needs can be leveraged
across an entire business activity, providing increased value
beyond the development of any single product. They see four
compelling reasons for companies to focus on uncovering needs as
the starting point of a user-centered design approach.
The first is that needs last longer than any specific solution
that may be developed which is often the focus of most companies.
They say that thinking of the company as a provider of a solution
may encourage the company to continue improving that solution, but
it rules out creating entirely new offerings that satisfy the need
in different ways. Conversely, focusing on needs encourages
companies to continue innovating better ways to serve those needs,
independent of current solutions.
Second, needs are business opportunities waiting to be exploited
by companies that understand that although solutions may come and
go, needs are generally enduring and are satisfied by a range of
solutions over time. A good example is the need for humans to enjoy
music wherever they go. Over the past few decades that need has
been satisfied by cassette players, compact discs, Walkmans,
computers and most recently MP3 players. Same need, different
solutions.
Third, focusing on needs provides a roadmap for development and
a method for determining what corporate skills and new offerings
should be developed to grow their businesses. A company may not
currently possess the capabilities necessary to satisfy all those
needs, but by identifying the ones that cannot yet be satisfied and
working toward meeting them, the company can plan the appropriate
medium to longer term investment to be able to deliver against
those consumer needs. Twenty years ago, Eastman Kodak realised
through customer studies that people didn't just want film and
photo processing, their underlying need was to capture and enjoy
images of daily life. As we know today, Kodak has maintained a
strong competency in this area and, where in the 1990s they found
themselves facing significant contraction of revenue due to the
introduction of digital cameras, they continue to be a dominant
force in the imaging value chain.
Lastly - and this is probably the most important - people become
accustomed to their problems, often developing workarounds to
circumvent a need. In doing this they become oblivious to the
needs' existence and as a result, traditional research and
marketing approaches will never uncover this problem, which is
potentially very valuable if companies are awake to the
opportunity. A good example of this is the requirement for cooks
over decades to either bend over or raise up the measuring cup to
eye level to read the measurements on the side of the cup. The OXO
measuring-cup now allows you to look straight down and see the
quantity of what you are measuring and is an excellent
demonstration of developing a product which is truly
human-centred.
The feedback from the Australian marketing community on the lack
of innovation in research approaches in combination with the lack
of outside-in (or need-finding) focus by companies potentially
presents a real issue not only for manufacturing companies, but
more importantly for service-based companies that make up 80 per
cent of the GDP of the Australian economy.
(Quote)
Unlike product-based companies, which can (but don't always)
invest significant attention and investment upfront into product
development prior to manufacture, service-based companies rely more
heavily on needing to use a range of service innovations, because
the very nature of services means they are intangible. As they are
normally consumed over a passage of time across a number of
interactions, consumers use these additional cues to judge the
quality of the offering when they are consuming the service.
So how do those companies, who wish to develop more compelling
products and services utilising user-centred design on their own
company's business problems, start?
The first step of the process is to identify who your users are
by asking a number of simple 'who' based questions. These include:
Who pays for it? Who uses it today? Who told someone else to buy
it? Who installs it? Who sells it to the customer? And, who looks
after it if it goes wrong?
Next, companies need to spend some time observing their users
and ask a lot more questions because you will find out things that
consumers would never normally tell you using traditional methods.
What patterns do you find from things that keep appearing? What
opportunities present themselves? What things really surprised you?
What are the things that people want or think they need? What are
the things that people find difficult about your product or service
or cause them trouble when using it? And finally, what works and
can be built upon to make the experience even better?
Too often consumers are asked to pass judgement on products and
services that have been developed in isolation from them and as a
result quite often they provide a failing grade. User-centred
design involves consumers from a very early stage and understands
that there are core users and extreme users who are quite often
looking for very different experiences. Seeking to understand both
sets of needs can provide really rich input for the further
improvement of your offer.
A key part of being user-centred is about prototyping your ideas
and having users start to show you how they would use them. IDEO
uses the term "build to think" to emphasise the value in
undertaking prototyping, or doing whatever it takes to communicate
the idea to users and allow the developers of new products and
services to walk in the footsteps of the end users. Wisely, they
say that the value lies in building very rough prototypes. Make
them quick, dirty and early and don't be afraid to throw away early
prototypes and build new ones because at the end of the day, that's
what they are for.
And finally, understand and appreciate the value of a
multi-disciplinary team that brings great breadth and depth to
solving your business problem. Most companies have industry and
company orthodoxies that are hard to see beyond. User-centred
design relies on assembling different points of view and people in
order to solve your most pressing business issues.
So, if you are up for going on the journey, remember that
success will require leadership that provides absolute clarity
about which customer problems the firm is dedicated to solving; the
ability to assemble deep insights into the unmet needs and wants
for your customers; the skill and focus at developing new customer
experiences along with new ecosystems and business models to
deliver those experiences; and good change management processes and
systems to turn unfamiliar business designs into fast-growth
businesses that can scale quickly.
Damian Kernahan is the managing partner of corporate growth
consultants, Proto Partners, www.protopartners.com.au.